Guide Contents

Administrative
Information

Access
and Restrictions:

This
collection is open for research.

Digital
Surrogates: Except where indicated, this document describes but
does not reproduce the actual text, images and objects which make up this
collection. Materials are available only in the Special Collections
Department.

Use of Collections:The University of Iowa Libraries supports
access to the materials, published and unpublished, in its collections. Nonetheless,
access to some items may be restricted by their fragile condition or by contractual
agreement with donors, and it may not be possible at all times to provide
appropriate machinery for reading, viewing or accessing non-paper-based materials.
Please read our Use of Manuscripts
Statement.

Biographical
Note

Iowa
author LeAnn Lemberger was born in 1954 and raised on a farm in Guthrie
County. She earned her B.A. from Drake University, where, as a journalism
student, she received both the Robert Bliss Award and William Randolph
Hearst Award.

In 1981, Harlequin
published her first romance novel, The Grand Hotel. She writes using
the name Leigh Michaels, a combination of her own name and that of her
husband Michael Lemberger. She now publishes an average of four new romances
each year, making Leigh Michaels Harlequin's most-published American author.
Her works have been translated into twenty-four languages and are sold
in 120 countries. Most of her novels are set in the Midwest and LeAnn Lemberger
still lives and writes in Ottumwa, Iowa. During the summer she teaches
for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City. She has also written
a text book and a self-help guide for students of creative writing.

Scope
and Contents

The papers of
LeAnn Lemberger date from 1982 to the present with additions being made
each year. They are organized by publication date, with an alphabetical
index. The vast majority of the collection consists of manuscript drafts
of her various romance novels, such as The Best Made Plans, Family Secrets,
and Traveling
Man. Also included are articles by and about the author, copies of
her newsletter Leigh Michaels Update, and teaching packets used
for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Where material
has come to us in scrapbooks, these scrapbooks have been disbound and the
material distributed into folders.

Beginning with the 2001addendum,
all duplicate copies and foreign language editions of Lemberger's books
will be included in this manuscript collection. Previously, these volumes
had been cataloged and shelved in the Iowa Authors Collection in Special
Collections.

Related Materials

LeAnn's husband Michael has a very successful career as a photographer.
He spent seventeen years as a news photographer, and is also a teacher of
photography as well as an artist (pen and ink and computer graphics) and
archivist. If you are interested in Micheal's photography and art, please
visit his web site at http://home.mchsi.com/~mlemberger/